


According to Plan

by WolfjawsWriter



Series: Darkwood and Co. [3]
Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Character Death, Dark, Dark Character, Death, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 06:24:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15261348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfjawsWriter/pseuds/WolfjawsWriter
Summary: He always has a plan.-----------Chapters are not in chronological order.





	According to Plan

**————Lockwood————**

The silence in Aickmere Brothers’ store was only comparable to the darkness inside it. How this place wasn’t brimming with ghosts I wasn’t sure, but it would have definitely been a plus to my plan. No matter, things were still displaying just the way I wanted them. The perfect way.

 

After George spent days examining those DEPRAC maps about the appearances during the Chelsea Outbreak and found what he thought could be the beginning of it, I hadn’t been sure that what he said would help us and our ideal, but once he explained what there was to the store, I knew there would not be a better opportunity to finally show the world what we had, and decided we had to take action. 

I ‘spoke’ to Barnes as fast as I could. DEPRAC called us mad of course, how could a place that hadn’t been reported be the focus of everything, it was lunacy! 

Just like I knew they would react.

 

Kipps, as I knew, had grown tired of having to listen to Inspector Barnes’ orders after so many Fittes agents have been losing their lives during this outbreak, so when we proposed to search Mr Aickmere’s department store and Barnes refused me, he was willing and almost begging me to let him help us, key word almost, but anyways willing. I played the proud leader part and refused him, but he insisted in collaborating with us if it meant to solve this terrible outbreak. He and I knew very well the implications of going against Inspector Barnes, but honestly I couldn’t care less, and I could see Kipps thought the same. Just perfect.

 

It took some coaxing, but Mr Aickmere allowed us to search the store as long as we stayed and kept away all harm from that horrific decoration he called a ‘tree’, but that was no inconvenient.

I had us all separated into perfectly planned teams. Teams I knew would work out flawlessly and where there should be no problem working; I would stay with Kipps and search the ground floor, George would take Bobby to the second floor, Holly would be with Kat in the third floor, and finally Lucy and Ned on the fourth. Simple Perfection.

 

Kipps’ team had been very reluctant to come, but do they seemed to understand their leader’s decision of coming, even if that decision included me giving the orders and not him. The price for freedom from ghosts and night threats has always been a high one to pay. In their case, I would say they were lucky.

I had explained the plan back at home and before Kipps’ team arrived, and made sure George, Holly and Lucy understood it step by step so nothing could go wrong, and I knew they would follow and perform it to the very best of their capability.

 

“We’ll split from here and come back to report to the others in two hours” Were my instructions “If anything happens, if anyone needs help, scream and try to come back here, then we’ll see what to do”

 

I was currently on the ground floor with Kipps, as the plan said; staying close to him and keeping our voices low as we took readings and notes of every corner. The floor in which we stood was silent of everything; no wind, no ghosts, not a sound even from outside the revolving front doors. Everything was quiet like I deemed it would be. Deemed perfection.

 

“Do you really think we’ll find anything here?” I turned to Kipps to find him staring at me, his question lingering in the dead-ish air. I stopped on my tracks and smiled my gigawatt smile at him.

 

“Of course” I said in my brightest voice “I trust George with my life; if he says the source is here, then it must be here, and we will find it, I know we will”

 

“I hope his right” He answered quietly “I won’t afford to lose an agent” My smile widened unintentionally, but with reason. Perfect reason.

 

“Oh, you won’t, believe me-”

 

A deep, long and grave howl resounded on the walls around us, on the mannequins and the displays, the ground and the ceiling, the grand echo distorting the direction it came from.

 

A scream. 

 

The signal.

 

Kipps and I looked at each other and sprinted towards the end of the room, where the enormous twin stairs rested. We stood there and waited for the rest of our teams to appear, our breathings long and deep.

 

“Who could that be?” 

 

“I don’t know” Oh, I knew who that was, but to tell would ruin the surprise! 

Soon we were joined by George and Bobby and Kat and Holly, all of them breathless and hurried to get here and see what was happening.

 

“So who yelled?” Holly asked once her breath was back. Yes…

 

“Wasn’t it any of you?” Bobby said.

 

“It wasn’t us” Kipps answered. The time was nearing…

 

“It was obviously a male scream” George pointed out. Soon…

 

“Wait” Kat turned on a torch and placed it between us so we could see each other “Where is Carlyle and Ned…?” 

 

“Ned, I’m afraid, will not be joining us” We turned around towards the sound, but the torch’s light didn’t reached far enough to illuminate that who had talked. 

A shadowy figure stood in the darkness, perched on top of one of the twin stairs, staring down on us.

 

“What are yo-”

 

“Lets just say” Something was pushed off beside it “He stood in the way” And came rolling and thudding down. It took less than a minute, but the thing reached he bottom and came into the light. Then everyone screamed.

 

It was a head. Ned’s head to be precise. The face was bruised, purple and blue, bleeding from cuts on the cheeks and on the hairline. The muscles were slack, his eyes rolled over the top and almost hooded. The hair was matted and sticky-looking with blood. You could see bits of the bones that used to make the neck protruding from the flesh under it.

 

“Ned, oh God!”

 

The figure slowly made its way down, sliding down the stairs a heavy looking sack behind it. It approached the now-fallen torch’s light, its heavy boots becoming clear, then the skirt, and the shirt, and finally the face. Lucy’s face. Her clothing was covered in blood, fresh, icky and strongly stinky. Gorgeously perfect.

 

“Here, maybe you can still give him a proper burial. At least the most wholesome part of him” She pushed the sack before her and into the light besides the head. It wasn’t a sack. It was Ned’s body.

 

“Lockwood!” Quill was now looking at me, his eyes horrified and his hands on his rapier, his words stuck in his throat with emotion and struggling to come “Your agent has just…attacked one of mine. I believe there is something you must do about it”

 

“Yes” I said with outmost serenity “I supposed there is…” I regarded the bloodied and dismembered body once more before smiling at charmingly Lucy “Well done Lucy, I knew I could always count on you” 

 

The sound of unsheathing rapiers cut through the death of the room, George and Holly now having turned towards the remaining Fittes agents, their rapiers in hand. Kipps pushed Bobby behind him and took a step back, Kat in her tear-stained splendor, placed a hand on her leader’s arm and looked at us.

 

“You know, Kipps” I turned towards him, my hands behind my back, and took a step forward “Barnes is always going on and on about how Lockwood and Co. is not a proper agency and how we’ll be done soon” Lucy now stood beside George and Holly, her rapier drawn as well, stepping forward while the grey-suited agents moved back “How we should just close and join a bigger, ‘better’, more resourceful agency, like Fittes, I suppose” I stood behind my comrades, their rapiers at the ready, waiting patiently and obediently for my signal. As perfectly planned. Kipps, I knew, was looking at me with more confusion than the one he could show, specially in this darkness “And you agents of bigger agencies think that we are not capable of much, with our limited assets, smaller cases and fewer personnel, but there is one thing that we have and treasure that is always forgotten in the bigger companies”

 

The Fittes agents were now pushed against the wall, standing surrounded between the twin stairs and my faithful and trusted friends. The stench of blood heavy in the air, the sound of Kat’s and Bobby’s uneven breathings the only things besides my voice that could be heard. I looked around the large room, the displays peacefully in their place. With all the emotions and feelings there were going inside this building, and seeing how there was not even the smallest sign of an apparition, there probably was no ghost in this building. Still, no reason to think George’s theory was wrong.

 

“And what would that be?” Kipps asked, hands on his unsheathed rapier, a protective stance in his manner as he shielded Bobby. I smiled what I knew was what Lucy called my “wolfish” smile; wicked, daring, charming. 

 

“Loyalty” I growled accusingly. Kipps' eyes widened in the petty light that the fallen torch still gave, realization settling in him. His grave mistake, his faux pas, his Achilles-heel; disobeying Barnes’ orders. 

I raised my rapier in hungry impatience, anxious to get started, ready for the juicy part of my perfect and flawless plan.

 

“Now, lets-”

 

Light.

 

“Stop right there!” I was blinded by the sudden whiteness above us, my arms flying to protect my closed eyes. The sound of running steps all around me made me try to open them, but the pain was too much.

 

“What has happened here?!” Barnes’s voice boomed from somewhere behind me. I opened my eyes slowly this time, letting them get used to the new radiance. I was still standing behind in the same place, my esteemed comrades also covering their slowly adjusting eyes. Kipps, Godwin and Bobby were also standing in the same place, eyes tightly closed too.

 

We were surrounded by DEPRAC workers, the lights had been turned on, though how did all managed to enter, I wasn’t sure. Mr Barnes was standing a few feet away from the dismembered body of Ned Shaw, covering his mouth with a handkerchief and looking like he would vomit as fast as he took it off.

 

“Mr Lockwood, what is going on?” He asked behind the handkerchief. Shit.

 

“Mr Barnes, what are you doing here? I thought you had no time to listen to ‘futile little theories’” I said in my most calm tone, even though I knew things would get difficult soon.

 

“Yes, but Mr Kipps told me about your little plan so I thought we should stop you from doing madness, but it seems I was barely in time…” He looked at the body again, his cheeks bulging momentarily. I glared at Kipps who had his arms now protectively over Kat and Bobby. The DEPRAC agents were pointing at us with their salt guns, so I signaled George, Lucy and Holly to retreat.

 

“Well, we were just here to prove George’s theory” I said business like.

 

“So Miss Carlyle just took a shower in blood-smelling cranberry juice?” Barnes sneered. I looked back to my employees, and, truth be told, Lucy did look like she took a bath in cranberry juice, but the stench of drying blood was too strong to be ignored; she stank of it.

 

“They were going to kill us!” Bobby yelled from behind Kipps, the shock from Ned’s body, my little monologue and DEPRAC’s arrival gone “They killed Ned!”

 

“Mr Lockwood…” Barnes, unbelievingly, chose his words carefully “Is what Mr Vernon saying…true?” 

 

I looked at my agents, thinking and considering what this…delay in my plans could bring on them, but by the determined look in their faces, I knew, they would still be loyal to me despite my answer, so I smiled deviously at Kipps and then at Mr Barnes.

 

“Yes, Mr Barnes” I said in a honey-sweet voice, then raised my rapier, to which Barnes significantly paled “Now, would you let us finish?”

 

“Apprehend them!” He exclaimed scandalized. 

 

My rapier was taken from me, as well as my rucksack. I turned to see the same happen to George, Holly and Lucy. None of them tried to fight back, following the example I set. The police and an ambulance were called, but there was nothing they could do for Ned, of course. He was already taken care of.

 

‘At least some of the plan did went accordingly’ I thought in bitter-sweet delight. The paramedics treated Kipps and his team with tea and blankets, while the police took care of us; they cuffed our hands behind our backs, then shoved us in pairs inside their cars.

I sat next to Lucy in the closer car, the deliciously metallic stench she exuded high on my nose and other senses.

 

“I’m sorry” She whispered, looking away from me and making me look away from the window “I should have killed Ned faster”

 

“Lucy, this is not your fault” I firmly said, softly bumping my shoulder with hers “If anything, it is mine: I should have had this in account when I made my plan” Again I looked outside, at Kipps, who was embracing Kat and Bobby, the three of them crying the death of their colleague. I looked at Mr Barnes, who was now talking with the officers and the paramedics while they took Ned’s body away. 

I growled angrily at the thought of that wretched, pathetic, miserable, heinous, hateful, nefarious, revolting, cursed, outrageous, mustachioed two-legged rat of a man.

 

“Next time” I viciously said “I’ll make sure everything goes perfectly according to plan”


End file.
